Kiley wants to shut entire Tube lines

Entire Tube lines could be shut for maintenance under plans drawn up by transport commissioner Bob Kiley, it emerged today.

The Circle, District, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines would all shut down for months next year if Mr Kiley is allowed to bring in his alternative to the Government's Public Private Partnership.

Passengers would be transferred to buses, stretching the network's capacity to the full and bringing chaos to the roads

Mr Kiley, a fierce opponent of PPP, said a far more radical shut-down of the network was needed than is being proposed under PPP to bring about swift improvements to London's ailing Underground.

The hugely disruptive proposals were revealed when Mr Kiley gave his formal response to the Government's £16 billion PPP.

Under PPP, line closures would be more limited and LU has ruled out shutting down entire lines at one time. PPP will see most infrastructure work delayed until 2010, when the second phase of the 30-year investment programme to be carried out by two private consortiums is due to start.

Work would be done between 1am and 5am - the only time of the day when trains are not running and maintenance crews can work on the lines' narrow tunnels. However, Mr Kiley said this would be disastrous for commuters and bring improvements in at far too slow a pace. "That window is just not big enough," he said. "Only extensive closures of lines can solve the problems."

Detailed analysis of the contracts expected to be signed with the private companies next month has revealed that only 12 new trains would be introduced over the first seven-and-a-half years of the programme. Initial promises to modernise more than 200 stations over that period have shrunk to cover just over 60.

Mr Kiley yesterday formally called for PPP to be ditched or subject to heavy modifications on the grounds that it has been "eroded" from its initial proposals to the point where it represents nothing more than a "glorified maintenance programme".

He claims that his plan to keep the Tube in the public sector would be £1.7 billion cheaper than PPP.

However, confirmation of the disruption it would inflict may raise doubts for the first time about the benefits of his alternative.

Closing down entire lines was a successful tactic he used when he oversaw the transformation of the struggling New York subway network-in the Eighties. However, the New York network was able to handle the closures as, unlike the Tube, most lines have four tracks and trains could be transferred from fast lines to slow lines while work was carried out on other sections.

Mr Kiley's key objection to PPP, alongside the concern that it will be unsafe, is that the private companies will be able to make huge profits while not carrying the financial risk for cost overruns and poor performance.

He estimates the eight companies involved in the Metronet and Tube Lines consortiums will see returns of £4billion on an equity investments of more than £500million over the life of the project. That is even higher than the £2.7billion return revealed by the Evening Standard yesterday.

A spokeswoman for Mr Kiley said: "The only way to get the work done is to shut down the lines, particularly the deep-level lines. There is just not enough time for maintenance engineers at night to carry out the work needed."

? Mayor Ken Livingstone has urged Londoners to help him his battle against PPP by writing to their MPs and Downing Street.

He spoke out after getting near unanimous backing at a public Mayoral question time session last night. In a show of hands among the estimated 500 people at the meeting, only two backed the PPP option.